target="_blank" being stripped from Profile Bio and Category Description

[lovewpmu]

Many apologies if this is a duplicate. I have searched but did not find it yet posted.

I noticed that target="_blank" is being stripped from my "a href" tags my profile "Biographical Info" field even though the "a href" with the URL and closing tag still remain. It happens every time I save my profile.

This was independently verified.

It is a regular wordpress install running 2.9.1 (not wordpressmu, etc.).

My original thread can be found here:
​http://wordpress.org/support/topic/355388?replies=1

The target attribute is still valid as of XHTML 1.0 Transitional, but you will probably have to use onclick instead. Probably neither are allowed to non-administrators.

there is no reason why someone who is filling out their bio with links to the relevant online info should need to code in javascript. in fact, most people using wordpress -- ie. the common user -- probably cannot. i believe the links on the HTML generated for posts, _blank is used for the "Open in New Window" option.

this should be standardized and completely independent from whether one is or is not an administrator.

It does seem to be using the same filters for admins. That's a bit surprising.

It's set up as a default filter for pre_user_description so you could override that with a plugin.

You might have a case for enabling unfiltered bios for administrators, but beyond that I think the "it's allowed in posts" argument isn't going to fly. WordPress explicitly filters bios the same way as comments instead of posts.

This also occurs in category descriptions. If I add a link to one of my category descriptions and specify target="_blank", the target reference gets stripped out when saving. Unlike bios, this filter definitely should not be applied.

Images, lists and class specifications are also being stripped away from category descriptions. What is the reasoning for being so strict with category descriptions?